by Mr. Akerman, who had already, in June, 1836, commenced the issue of the Numismatic Journal, of which the last part, completing a second volume, appeared in April, 1838.

In 1839 began the issue of the first series of the Numismatic Chronicle, and at the Annual Meeting on the 19th July of that year the number of ordinary members amounted to 155. At this period the meetings of the Society were held, by permission, in the rooms of the Royal Astronomical Society, but, in 1841, apartments for the Numismatic Society were secured in Exeter Hall. In 1842, however, it migrated to rooms in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. In 1843 the number of members began considerably to fall off, being reduced to 132, and in 1846 this had fallen to 123. In 1849, the year in which I became a member of the Society, we numbered 106 only. In 1851 our numbers were still farther reduced to 93, and in 1854, when I became one of the secretaries of the Society, we mustered but 82 ordinary members. In 1856 the fortunes of the Society had fallen still lower, and our President, the late Mr. Vaux, made the liberal offer that the Society should for the future meet in his rooms at 13, Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

In June, 1859, we attained our lowest point of 59 members; but in 1861, when the Numismatic Chronicle was taken into the hands of the Society, and a vigorous effort was made to reestablish it, our numbers had increased to 71.

By 1863 we had risen in number to 103. In 1871, after the completion of the first ten volumes of the Second Series of the Numismatic Chronicle, our number was 141. In 1874 the Society again changed its domicile to apartments in the house of the Royal Society of Literature, 4, St. Martin's Place, thanks mainly to the kindness of our then President, Mr. Vaux. It was in that year that I became your President, and at the Anniversary Meeting our members were returned as 153. In June, 1881, after the completion of the twenty volumes of the Second Series of the Numismatic Chronicle, I recited some of

the statistics I have now given, and called attention to the satisfactory circumstance that the number of our ordinary members then amounted to 199. Since that time we have again changed our home to the convenient apartments we now occupy, under the Royal Asiatic Society, in Albemarle Street, for which also we were mainly indebted to the late Mr. Vaux, and, as you have just heard from the Report of the Council, our ordinary members are now 242 in number, or fully four times what they were in 1859.

I think that I may fairly congratulate the Society on this remarkable growth in its numbers, of which probably its own activity has to a great extent been the cause.

Looking back upon what we have done, we may with justice take credit for the greater part of the two volumes of the Numismatic Journal, and of the twenty volumes of the first series of the Numismatic Chronicle, while the whole of the twenty six volumes of which the second and third series are composed are entirely our own. We may, I think, also with some satisfaction, point to the quality of much of the matter in the Chronicle, which will, I think, well bear comparison with that in any of the analogous foreign journals. I will not attempt to specify particular articles, but all will agree that our scientific knowledge of classical and English numismatics has made material advances within the last thirty years, and that these have been mainly due to the members of this Society and to the contributors to the pages of the Numismatic Chronicle. Omitting the names of those who are still among us, I may cite such authorities as Akerman, Bergne, Birch, Borrell, Burgon, Haigh, Henfrey, Lindsay, Sainthill, de Salis, Thomas, and Vaux, whose reputation as numismatists is in many cases not confined to this country.

There is another point in connection with the Jubilee of the Society which also must be mentioned, although, through no act of my own, it has assumed a somewhat personal character. The Council in December last determined that it would be a fitting memorial of the Numismatic Society's Jubilee, if a medal were

struck in honour of the occasion, which should be distributed

among its members. A design was proposed by which the Jubilee of her Majesty would have been commemorated on the obverse, where her portrait would have appeared, and the Jubilee of the Society would have been recorded on the reverse. The Council, however, with what I am afraid may appear greater loyalty to their President than to their Sovereign, determined that the portrait and name of your President should be shown on the obverse, alleging as a precedent that when the Society was founded a medal was struck with the portrait of its first President, Dr. Lee. Into the discussion of the subject I could hardly enter, and I found myself in a contemptible minority in upholding the first design.

The Jubilee year of her Majesty's reign will be commemorated by the issue of a new coinage, on which the youthful portrait that has now been in use for a period of fifty years will be superseded by one more in accordance with her Majesty's present age. This portrait is in the main taken from that by Mr. Boehm, designed for the large commemorative medal, but has suffered much in the reduction, mainly owing to the proportions of the frill of the veil to the veil itself, and of the head to the neck and shoulders, not having been successfully preserved. So far as denominations are concerned the principal novelty is the introduction of a double florin or four-shilling piece, of which the utility has still to be tested. The device on the reverse of this piece reproduces the design of Simon for the large gold coins of Charles II, and the reverse types of the other coins are, with the slightest variations, reversions to types which have been in use within the present century. One of these variations is in the shape and character of the crown, which appears to be but a doubtful improvement. It seems unfortunate that so favourable an opportunity for introducing really new designs on the reverse of our coins should have been lost, and I cannot but think that some communication between the Master of the Mint and the Council of this Society

on the subject of both the obverse and reverse designs might possibly have been advantageous. Mr. C. Roach Smith, in a memorial to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, has advocated the adoption of designs having reference to some of the chief events of her Majesty's reign, and though the exigencies of commerce require a stereotyped uniformity in the types of our coins, yet something might have been done in the direction thus indicated, so that we might at all events have been spared from a reintroduction of the obsolete armorial designs of the great re-coinage of 1816.

In my anniversary address of last year I expressed a hope that the question of treasure-trove might be reconsidered by the Government, and this hope has now been fulfilled. The new regulations, however, while recognising the archæological value of objects found as being the basis of remuneration to the finder, distinctly inform him that he is not to receive the full market value of the articles retained for our national collections. As I have already commented in the pages of the Numismatic Chronicle1 on the short-sighted policy involved in these regulations I will not detain you longer on this subject.

I therefore address myself to a short review of the work accomplished by the Society during the past year. The attendance at our meetings and the number of objects of interest exhibited at them has, I think, been somewhat above the average, but there appears to have been a slight falling off in the number of papers communicated, though perhaps not in their importance. In Greek numismatics Canon Greenwell has favoured us with an exhaustive memoir on the electrum coinage of Cyzicus, in which, besides recording the political history of that town and giving details of its mythology, he has described not less than a hundred and seventy-two examples of the stater and its sub-› divisions, nearly all of which can without hesitation be referred

1 Vol. vi, 3rd Series, P. 176.

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to Cyzicus. When we consider that this coinage was absolutely unknown to Eckhel, the advance that has been made in certain departments of numismatic knowledge since his days is strongly borne in upon us; and though there are questions relating to the meaning of some of the types, the relative value of the coins to those of pure gold in circulation at the same time, and perhaps many other points, the catalogue and details furnished by this memoir render it the repertory of all that is at present known, and the starting-point for future investigations as to this interesting series.

Professor Gardner has made us acquainted with the principal Greek coins acquired for the British Museum in 1885, among which are some remarkable pieces. It is much to be regretted that the limited purchasing power of the Museum has this year been still further reduced, but to this point I shall recur later on.

Mr. Svoronos has communicated some notes with regard to an inscription on some coins of Gortyna which by Sestini has been read as MYNOTAYPOΣ, but which Mr. Wroth had published as more probably TIEYPOI. Mr. Svoronos regards this as an epithet of the Gortynians like that of the KPHTEΣ ΙΕΡΑΠΥΤΝΟΙ ΑΞΙΟΙ, &c.

In Roman numismatics not much has been done. One of our foreign members, M. Charles Robert, has called attention to X an explanation offered by M. R. Mowat of the symbol which occurs on some of the coins of the Constantine period and which he interprets as Decima (pars) sestertii. The suggestion seems plausible, but it may be urged against its acceptance that the symbol is not of general occurrence on the coins of a particular weight, but is confined to the issues of two or three Eastern mints.

The only other paper on the Roman Imperial coins was one by myself, in which I gave an account of a few rare or unpublished coins in my own collection, principally of gold.